Thursday, October 1, 2009

Thursday Thinking – Focusing on What’s Important

Last week I rambled on and on about how to make our fall schedule work and getting everything I want to do fitted into our days; and it occurred to me after reading my post a few times that my focus was entirely on the wrong things.

I’ve been way too focused on tot-schooling / pre-schooling M. Way, way, way too focused. I love planning school activities, but when I’m totally stressed out because I just don’t know how I’m going to get it all done, something is very wrong.

M is only 3. He has the rest of his life, well his childhood at least, to learn about patterns, color shades, the sounds “C” can make, and so on… he doesn’t need to learn it all right now. Especially if Mommy is grumpy about it. He'll be going to school at age 6 (we will most likely not homeschool), and I only have a few more precious years with him. This thought has hit me with force the past few weeks. I don’t have time to work on getting my act together and figuring everything out. I need to be kind, patient, and gentle with him now, love him now, and help him to grow in love now.

I get a great amount of enjoyment and energy from putting things together to do with him, but my focus has shifted from “I want to have fun one-on-one time with you and maybe help you have fun learning in the process”, to “we’ve got to do this because I spent 2 days putting it together and I want to blog about it.”

Putting things together for him and planning our tot school time together is something I’ll continue to do as I can find the time, after all the important stuff is done. I want to keep it in our life, just not at the top of my list of priorities. It never should’ve risen to that spot in the first place.

Housework is another stressor for me – I don’t like cleaning (*news flash!*). But I do love the feeling of having the household running in an orderly manner. It’s important to me and so I’ve come up with what I want/need to have done on a regular basis. I hope to post about that some time soon (because this post is already too long and you are probably sick of these long rambling posts of mine!).

This post was a real eye-opener for me and I hope you’ll click over and read it – It says all my heart needs to remember as I “mother” M. I’m going to print it out so I can read it every day.

10 comments:

I've had times like this as well and you are right. It is so important to take a step back and reavaluate WHY I am doing what I am doing.i hope that you still post because I love your blog:) Good Luck and enjoy your LO.

I love your Thursday thinking posts - they speak so well about your journey to motherhood. I saw a quote yesterday that said, "Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child." Sometimes I also think that I am much too keen on getting Anna to grow up soon instead of enjoying her as she is today - her silly repetitive games, her endless questions, her inevitable messes. Thanks for reminding us to focus on what's truly important.

I was just thinking along these same lines myself - that I'm totally pushing Bear too fast when I had initially set out determined I would not do that to her. (In fact I was awake part of the night reflecting on thi.s) Not that I force tot school upon her, but even just the fact that I try to think up of new phonics and alphabet activities for her and that suddenly it is imperative that she recognize her numbers - and she's just 25 months. For me though part of it is reading all these wonderful blogs and seeing what other children are able to do at Bear's age or just beyond. It brings out the competitiveness in me and in turn I give Bear activities beyond her age. She rises to the challenge, but why do I even feel the need to challenge her? All we've done is read books and paint today and for once, I'm totally happy with that! Thanks for the link to the article. I love your Thursday Thinking posts btw.

This post spoke to me - thank you for sharing it. The same type of thoughts have been swimming around in the back of my gotta-do-it-all-in-order-to-be-a-great-mom mind. It's all about perspective and it's so easy to loose sight of what's what sometimes. I catch myself over planning all.the.time. I LOVE to plan, so to pull back kinda goes against my nature. It's crucial to do it though - before we know it our babies will be adults and we'll think back to those moments we spent snuggled up reading with them and not so much about how well we planned out their Tot School activities. :)

I just read the rest of your "Thursday Thinking" posts. I loved reading what another mother was thinking, maybe because it is so similar to what I've been thinking. I just posted on my new blog something along the same lines. Thank you for sharing!

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About Me

I am a wife of 13 years and mother of two sons, ages 6 and brand new. We have a lot of fun learning and growing together. I share a bit of that here, and welcome you to follow us along our happy (but sometimes exhausting) little journey.
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